Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 May 1901 — Suicide Rooms in Asylums. [ARTICLE]

Suicide Rooms in Asylums.

In seme of the asylums for the insane there are certain apartments known as "suicide rooms." These are set aside as harbors of refuge for those patients who manifest a strong desire to end their lives. Everything in these rooms is round. There are no knobs or posts to the beds, for the maniac would tie a sheet around any sucn protection and hang himself. For the same reason there are no gas fixtures and no inside shutters. There are not even door knobs, while the doors themselves are made to open outward. When the men undress their clothes are carefully removed from the room, so. that they may not be used for strangling their owners. All the edges of bureaus, the backs of chairs, etc., are carefully rounded, so that there may be no points upon which the inmates might beat their heads. No canes or sticks are allowed in the rooms. The doors are left open at night, and a keeper parades incessantly up and down before them. A measure which has attracted widespread attention was introduced in the Ohio legislature Wednesday. It provides a very good solution for that Irritating social problem, "What to do with a man who won’t support his family.” Wife deserters and fathers who abandon their children to the tender mercies of charity are to occupy a new relation to the victims of their heartlessness if the proposed measure becomes a law. Instead of being useless members of society while confined in the penitentiary they are to contribute to the support of those depending upon them with the proceeds of their labors during Imprisonment. Every man arrested on the charges referred to will be placed at some kind of work during his incarceration, providing he has not learned a trade, and a certified sum, the result of his enforced work, will be paid at stated Intervals to his wife or family. The passage' of the bill will be advocated by some of the most prominent philanthropic organizations in Ohio. The bill is without a parallel in the history of legislation against desertion and abandonment in this country. In one or two European countries a similar law is in force, but no attempt ever has been made before in the United States to provide relief for the victims of this form of crime while punishment is being inflicted upon the guilty husbands and fathers.